The word as it is recited in the Quran: Mahmoud Khalil Al-Hussary, Ar-Rum 30:48.
Sahab in Islam
The word occurs nine times in the Quran, among Allah’s signs: “It is Allah who sends the winds, which stir up clouds (sahaban); He spreads them in the sky as He wills… and you see the rain coming from within them” (30:48).
Meaning of the name Sahab
Sahab means clouds, from the root s-h-b, “to drag”: clouds are so named because they drag across the sky, or because the wind drives them. For desert Arabs they announce rain and life. The feminine name is given in the Middle East and the Gulf.
It is Allāh who sends the winds, and they stir the clouds and spread them in the sky however He wills, and He makes them fragments so you see the rain emerge from within them. And when He causes it to fall upon whom He wills of His servants, immediately they rejoice
Do you not see that Allāh drives clouds? Then He brings them together; then He makes them into a mass, and you see the rain emerge from within it. And He sends down from the sky, mountains [of clouds] within which is hail, and He strikes with it whom He wills and averts it from whom He wills. The flash of its lightning almost takes away the eyesight.
Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the alternation of the night and the day, and the [great] ships which sail through the sea with that which benefits people, and what Allāh has sent down from the heavens of rain, giving life thereby to the earth after its lifelessness and dispersing therein every [kind of] moving creature, and [His] directing of the winds and the clouds controlled between the heaven and earth are signs for a people who use reason.
And it is He who sends the winds as good tidings before His mercy [i.e., rainfall] until, when they have carried heavy rainclouds, We drive them to a dead land and We send down rain therein and bring forth thereby [some] of all the fruits. Thus will We bring forth the dead; perhaps you may be reminded.
